Senator has not declared presidential bid, but wants to talk to Americans about issues facing them

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., will headline a town hall meeting Saturday at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at St. Anselm College in Manchester. Sanders, who has said for months he is mulling a run for the White House in 2016, but who has also said the mid-term elections of 2014 are more pressing to the nation, told New England Cable News Friday that one goal of the town hall meeting is "seeing what's on people's minds."

The Independent, who caucuses with Democrats and describes himself as a Socialist, has not declared as a candidate for the presidency. "It's no great secret that I'm giving some thought to it," Sanders said. "For me to make a rational and good decision, it's not just me deciding. It is whether or not people in New Hampshire, in South Carolina, in Michigan, in Minnesota--I'm going to Minnesota--whether or not they agree with the concepts that I am talking about."

Those concepts include, in the words of Sanders, the crisis of a shrinking middle class, a widening gap between the rich and poor in America, college affordability, climate change, and more. "Why is it that the United States of America is the only country in the industrialized world-- major country--that doesn't guarantee health care to all people as a right?," Sanders asked.

"I don't think he's going to run," said Garrison Nelson, a political science professor at the University of Vermont. "He wants to be a voice. Whether he's a candidate is another story. But he wants to be a voice."

Nelson told NECN he believes Sanders is hinting about the presidency as more of a strategy to keep pressure on Democrats to not drift too much to the middle, and keep a laser focus on some of his favorite causes, like protecting the middle class and improving health care. Nelson also noted that should Sanders become more serious about raising his national profile, Republican Super PACs would surely have a field day targeting him and his long history of endorsing issues from the left.

Sanders said the tone of his meetings with Americans will be about gauging their appetite for big changes in the country. "Are they prepared to participate in a political revolution?" Sanders asked. “To empower working families; to change the direction in which America is going. That’s a pretty strong agenda.”

Sen. Sanders said whoever emerges as their parties’ candidates in 2016, he hopes voters will be hungry for substantive debates on the issues, to get beyond personality profiles and attack ads.

According to the website for the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, the Sanders event for Saturday is at capacity.